On this episode, host Teri-Denise is joined in studio by fellow LCC DMAC student Brian W. Kohls, who shares his passion for aviation. From growing up flying remote-controlled helicopters to now working with drones, Brian gives insights into how aerial photography has shaped the way he sees the world, emphasizing the value of perspective in everyday life.

Hello there. This is Teri-Denise, a Lansing Community College student and your host of RIPPER, an LCC Connect podcast where I interview others and ask about their unique efforts and connections in, around and beyond the community of Michigan's Capital City.

Hello? It is a day. It is a day of days. Who am I speaking with today?

Brian Khols.

Yes, Brian, you just had a birthday the other day. How are you doing about that?

Okay with it actually. One more trip around the sun.

Yes, that's what I usually say to people.

I guess I'm not that original then, am I?

No, I think it's a wonderful thing to say to people because it makes them think about what that means and that you've actually like, we're all on this bio ship together, roll men around, around our big sphere in the sky and it's like you survive another rotation of that. And it's. It's very interesting for people to stop and think about it for a second.

Yeah. Like, yeah, I'll be honest, death comes across my mind a lot for whatever reason.

Okay.

So it's like one of those things where I'm constantly aware that, oh crap, someday I'm going to die and I may not be around this earth again anymore. However you say that. I don't know if you believe in reincarnation or any of that stuff, but.

Like it's in the blood to believe in it. It's definitely indoctrinated into my DNA.

I'll just say that same. So for me, I'm just like, okay, I made another trip around the sun the 32nd time. Okay, what do I want to do about that before lights out?

Right.

How do I want to live my life?

What do I want the next trip around the sun to go like, correct. That's absolute. It's so great to talk to another person about these things that I like troll about in my head a lot.

Actually, Brian, I just want to do another semi introduction because we just rolled right in there. So Brian, I know you from class present class that we have. We're both in the digital media audio cinema production area of class right now.

And, and we're at different points but we are in the same classroom with our professor Jeff Hamlin here at the school at lcc and we are doing some video production this year. Intro to Video production. And you just showed me some of your footage that you got. You like to get drone footage.

What on earth got you into not only just video, but into like doing drones?

So my story with the radio controlled world of any kind of Aviation. It started back when I was probably, I think, first, second, or third grade.

Nice.

One of the three.

Okay.

And I saw this children's book in the school library I was going to, and it had, like. It was a very simple book, but it just said the helicopter flew over the building. The helicopter flew over this.

The helicopter landed, and it's like some old guy who. Ironically, that's usually who flies these things for whatever reason. But, like, this old guy comes up to this kid and shows him his RC helicopter.

And I was like, I want one of those. And the passion just never stopped.

My mom has always told me that, like, my third word was helicopter, because that's all I wanted for, like, Christmas, birthdays, you name it. I want a new helicopter, Mom. I want a new helicopter.

That's impressive.

Yeah. Thank you.

I was always really intimidated by certain RC or remote control toys. And because I would. Okay. So when I was a child, some of my Saturdays were full of me tailing on to my father going to Radio Shack. So some of my.

He was.

It's been a minute since that place has been around.

So, yeah, it would either be like trips to Radio Shack or to, like, service merchandise, if anybody remembers. Service merchandise, which was one of the places in the mall where it was just a hodgepodge of jewelry and video electronics.

And there was definitely lights in there. So it was, I don't know, stage lights, stuff like that.

But for Radio Shack, I was always really intimidated when I would go in there because I'm like, oh, I know how to use a remote control race car. So we had a race car that we would use. But of course, it was my father's toy, as he was an adult male and was like, got this now.

So he would spend hours with that thing. And then by the time he's tired and going in to take his old man nap, I would, you know, it was like, oh, yay, now I get to use these.

And then all of a sudden, the battery would die. So I rarely got a chance to use it. But when I did, it was a lot of fun.

But I was always intimidated by everybody that could utilize the flying RCs because you needed a lot more. You needed a lot more spatial reference, I guess, and ability to do, like, up, down, and also left. Right, right, left.

And there's a lot more fine motor control.

There we go.

Involved with it.

Yeah, that's exactly. Which is why also, I have a difficult time using certain game systems, gaming consoles. I'm really good up to a certain point. N64 Great.

Anything past that, like the Xbox and play, mostly the Xbox has warped my brain a little bit too much because I'm much more of a. I'll use a joystick, but I can't use two joysticks at one time. It's gotta be one joystick and then the directional pad.

Okay, yeah, that makes sense.

So, yeah, my mind gets stuttered a little bit in there. It gets maybe too realistic.

Okay.

When. On the viewpoint.

So when you think about it, that's kind of the area in your brain though to control those drones and whatnot that it's got to function on. You've got to be a lot more fluid and have that ability to just, I guess, engage with what you could be seeing below.

So do you have that ability to like. Do you have like a Hawkeye in your brain going on?

I'm not sure actually. So I originally started out with RC helicopters, which everybody told me to go to airplanes because they're easier.

And I'm like, no, no, we're not doing that. That's child's play.

Okay.

So I started with RC helicopters, like the small ones, and I got into the larger ones, like 600 classes and stuff like that.

Okay, so tell me how like kind of big that is. Just.

So a 600 class, they don't really make those anymore, but they're like. Each rotor blade is about 600 millimeters long.

Whoa.

Okay. It's like the class. It fits into the standard class. Like 700 millimeter each rotor blade. So those things are swinging pretty fast and hard.

Can you fit a small child into those?

Unfortunately, no. Because I would have gotten in immediately if I had that opportunity.

I mean, you could probably fly a guinea pig in there or something, but they might not make it back home alive.

Oh, man.

But I originally had a really. I had a strong resistance to drones for the longest time.

Okay.

Because I felt they, like they took no skill to fly.

Oh.

And for the most part, I feel like that's. I don't want to sound braggy, but somewhat accurate for me because I brag.

If you. If you. Because I back it up for sure.

Well, I can. Cuz I just showed you some footage. Yes, but.

And it was beautiful.

Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah.

I feel like drones for me are easier to fly cuz I started out doing the really hard stuff.

Okay.

With line of sight flying with the helicopter. So basically, line of sight means that you are seeing. You can see the drone from your perspective out in front of you somewhere.

And if you're doing like fpv. Drones. That's like where you wear goggles or something that projects the screen onto so you see where the drone is going.

What's fpv?

First person view.

Okay.

So it's like fpv first person shooter. You know, same sort of thing. You're coming from the drone's perspective versus your own two eyes perspective.

Okay. So that is kind of. I guess that's what I meant by the Hawkeye then.

So when you see a drone flying out in the distance, you can perceive what it is, its viewpoint.

So I. Yes and no.

Okay.

It takes me more time to do it that way.

Okay.

To react and respond effectively and correctly. If I try to put myself in the cockpit per se.

Whereas if I just know the orientation of the aircraft and I just know it from where it's at, from where I'm standing, it's like I can just easily move the joystick in the correct direction because I've. I've trained that enough in my brain through flying the RC helicopters for all my life.

Okay.

And that's easier for me then putting myself in the actual cockpit, looking at things from that perspective. Or else I'm like, I don't know what's going on. I think it's spinning around, doing a bunch of weird tricks, and I'm just like, I can't.

That would make me nauseous, probably.

See, that's probably what I would do. Just spinning around. There's no aim anywhere.

Right.

But so how did you make the jump from. So you had 600 class RC helicopters and then. So what about. What age after were you when you were getting in that. That big of a class of.

Oh. So I started flying the smaller ones around age 14.

Okay.

I've tried the toy brand ones earlier. Didn't work out. I don't recommend those. You can't repair them, so.

Oh, they said they would crash.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

Like first time. And my mom was like, we're not doing that. If you want to buy one, go ahead when you get the money to do it.

But otherwise, you know, this is too hard for me to watch. I'm like, okay, fine.

So can. Can you repair the larger classes?

Oh, absolutely.

Okay.

Well, yeah, they make parts for them still. Yes, sure.

So this is why I would see them in Radio Shack all the time.

Correct.

Okay, that makes sense.

Yes. And hobby shop specifically. So I got into the 600s. About age. I want to say 18 or 19.

Okay.

I was using part of my money I got for graduation to buy one from a friend. Nice who sold me everything I need to get started with that size class of helicopter.

Okay.

And so after that I had flown them for a good few years or so. And then I ended up figuring out later on in life after I got into aviation program at LCC here.

Nice.

The Mason Jewett airport campus. At the airport. Airport.

Oh my gosh. Wow. You got. That's a wide range.

Thank you.

Nice.

So I ended up withdrawing from that program. It just wasn't what I was looking for anymore. And I was like, what am I going to do?

How deep did you get into the aviation program?

I almost completed it, man. I almost completed it.

Okay.

So I didn't end up wanting to get the licensing to do all of it. And I just felt like the job was not going to be a good fit for me with my situation. So I was like, okay, I need to find a different route.

I think at least at the time. Because you never know. Some of us come back 20 years later and get back into the same program they were in 20 years before. So you never know.

But it's great to have that information as a ground layer and foundation for.

Oh, for sure.

From what the footage. And now it makes sense when you're talking about even being in the drone that you can see kind of 360 around.

So in the aviation program, it sounds like you got way up there. So you were already. You were in the flight.

The maintenance sphere.

Maintenance sphere. Did you. You were going up in the air?

I did once, but that was like trip to another airport with the president, I think it was of the program. I don't know.

Oh, okay.

Anyway, he took us for a little bunny hop to another airport.

Nice.

All the students just to show us how the airplane worked, I guess.

Okay.

But like I was in the mechanic side of things.

Okay, that makes sense.

You were have a flight program anymore at lcc.

Okay, so there we go. So we go from you using your.

The toy helicopters into you getting into these higher class hobby kind of helicopters where you can fix and repair different broken pieces of machinery or things that need to be tightened. So that got your interest in way deep. So as to where you were in the aviation program at LCC for. Specifically for mechanics and repairing.

Correct that sound? Right.

And repair of real aircraft that you would actually get inside of and maybe fly to Florida and.

Oh, wow. Okay.

So this wasn't a drone program at all. This was like for real aircraft that you would get inside of and like I said, fly somewhere.

And what's the, what was the Range of aircraft, then everything.

They want you to cover everything.

Nice. Including helicopters.

Yes. We didn't do much of that. There was, like, two days in that program where we got to cover helicopters. And I was very disappointed because.

Because I was like, I want to repair helicopters. And it's like the same licensing applies across the board.

Oh, okay.

But helicopters are not quite as abundant for job positions. Like, it's not as high turnover for helicopter mechanics, so they.

The jobs get held on.

Yeah. And plus, the program is sponsored by Delta, and I don't think Delta flies helicopters, last time I checked.

Oh, okay.

So, yeah, we're not focused heavily on helicopters, despite there being a ton of lab techs who worked on helicopters in the military. So it's like we'll have all these resources for helicopters, but yet we don't even talk about them until, like, the second year we're in there.

Okay.

And it was, like, for two days. And I'm just. I was very disappointed about that personally, but.

Yeah.

But everyone else got what they needed out of it, so it's not like it. It wasn't a waste of time. It was just touched on them briefly.

Okay. And then. So the program. How close were you then?

I was one semester away from completing the program.

Okay.

Before I withdrew.

And I was having, you know, some personal stuff going on in my life at the time that was just stacking on top of things that were already going on currently, so.

So needed a break. And then. So were you keeping the aviation skills within your life?

Kind of.

Okay.

I wanted to keep myself in the aviation sphere the best way I could, which I felt like was gonna be with drones, and LCC had just started a drone program like this. First or second year, I was in the aviation maintenance program.

Wow.

So I got in there after a year of just taking a year off from school, from anything technical, and I just did a bunch of painting classes, some drawing class, and just. I needed a creative break from thinking super technically all the time.

Isn't that a funny thing? Creatives? When we say we need a break, it's like, it's technically never away from anything creative.

It's like, no, I just need to go and do something else in another sphere of creativity. But, yeah, because you. You get focused and you start to lose some. You start to lose your vision, even. Or like, why am I even doing this? Or why.

Why was. Why am I wanting to build the sculpture anyway? And then.

Right.

You see, Da Vinci is all over the place. Raphael. All of those guys were into so many different Things.

And we see that as some kind of form of genius, but it's just like, I'm pretty sure they all had sorts of adhd, honestly.

Right.

They were just like, I'm just gonna hop over and finish that sculpture real quick. I'm gonna talk about philosophy over here. And perhaps this is the reason why our bodies are built the way they're built.

And going right back to the sculpture.

Thing, like A year later, 100% on board with that. I feel like my brain works very similarly because I know that in the aviation field, it's all very technical.

There's not much creativity in it from what. Where my experience comes from. Like, it's all very much by the book, and you have to be. And that's totally fine.

Right.

And that's how it needs to be. However, for me, I have a more creative brain than just technical. And it's like, I need to express myself a little bit.

And I wasn't able to do that in that class. And there was like, we were in that particular campus where there's just, you know, two classes going at the same time. That's it.

And I never got to go on the main campus because I didn't have a reason to.

Right.

And so I didn't really. I didn't make a ton of friends until I started coming back to this campus here at the Gannon Building in particular.

So it's main campus.

Correct.

Okay.

I haven't really kept in touch with very many of my classmates from the aviation program, but it was a really bizarre class, too. Nothing against the program or the people who were teaching it. Nothing at all. But we had a very unusual class that year.

Okay. Just for the year itself.

Yeah. For that particular two year program that we all were in, we had a very unusual class where it was very clicky and I just am not good with clicks.

Yeah. You know, that's a weird thing when that happens.

I know everybody experiences it, whether you're in the workplace or you're in the collegiate university area. It's just people are people, and sometimes you feel like you're not one of the people.

Right.

But that's really interesting. Things come from that. When you have to keep trying to make your connections and stay involved with what you're there to do.

So there's a certain kind of focus that you yourself get out of that. And that helps you grapple on to a lot more other areas of your life as well.

Your brain starts working in a different way and you're like, how can I problem Solve this when. And there's nobody around me to help problem solve this with me.

And then that was exactly my experience there.

Interesting.

100%. Yeah.

So your brain starts then going into over. It does overdrive.

Yeah, it goes into overdrive, and you start to figure things out, whether it's just on your own or there's another area of people that suddenly just start appearing out of nowhere, and you're like, oh, okay. Yeah, I would have never thought of something that way. Even though you're in a completely different area of thought.

And I would have never thought of anything that way. And it helps you to start to redefine or adjust your personal projection of what it is that you were trying to attain in the first place.

Right.

And I think it kind of helps solidify even where your heart was at in the first place. So you went in for, like, wanting to study helicopters, really?

Yeah, pretty much right now, what I've seen from what you've done with your drone footage was really amazing. Thank you. So I loved not only the footage. So Brian showed me a couple minutes of footage that he got of in the winter time period.

Some of the lighthouses there in Grand Haven on the pier.

Nope, it was South Haven.

South Haven, even. So not even Grand Haven. It was South Haven.

I didn't know where Grand Haven's at. So it wasn't there.

It's just north of Southaven, but there, though, on the Michigan lake coast. So which, of course, we love lakes, and we love talking about anything on the outer edges here on Ripper.

So to be able to see that footage, the ice coming down off of the lighthouse, that is. It's such a beautiful, like, crispy view and point of view and the editing on top of that. So it wasn't just the footage.

It was the way you edited everything. You. You sliced some music in there and produced it, and it looks amazing.

Thank you.

Yeah. So the skills that you had already had from just having an interest as a child in then getting a better bird's eye view, hawk eye view.

I don't know why I said hawk in particular, but having that kind of a bird's eye view coming from being able to see things a different way, maybe through the program itself as well, going through the aviation area, you kind of get a little bit of a wider spectrum, I guess, maybe of engaging with what's going on below you and how high you can be for thousands of feet for picking certain things up in the sky.

Sure. I mean, we're not supposed to fly over 400ft for drones, but. Oh, you can under certain circumstances. But the FAA is like, very, like, oh, right.

About that. For good reason.

Okay.

There have been some very unintelligent people who have flown drones before, and it seems to attract a few of those type of people consistently because there have been, like, incidents where drones got sucked into jet intakes whilst there's people flying to some place.

Oh, no.

And I think. I don't remember if there's been any, like, actual people died from it or not. I don't remember, but it wouldn't surprise me.

So. Yeah. So that comes from having some aviation experience that you would have to know. So regulations are what you're talking about.

Air regulations we have. Which is so important.

Very much so.

Especially during certain times.

I wasn't gonna say that, but I definitely agree.

Well, it's good to know. So your perspective on a lot of things is just very. It seems like you have.

You're coming from a place where it's like, I need to have a bigger picture of things to understand the more intricate levels of things.

Oh, yeah, for sure.

So that it's. Is that parallel to life experience for you as well?

I'd say so, actually. Like, I know I keep coming back to my mom, but she's a massive influence in my life.

Talk about your mom all you want.

Okay, I will then.

So my mom has always had this ability to see the bigger picture of things very easily, in my opinion, and have a very high level of critical thinking and to be able to execute on that critical thinking very well. And I've always looked up to that because I used to struggle really hard to think like her.

And it's like, as I'm 32 now, it's like, okay, I've gotten a level of that built into my brain that I've had to construct over the course of, like, since I turned 25. It's like, oh, I'm 25, and I have some common sense now. That's kind of cool. And it just kind of clicked from there.

And then I kind of just have expanded on it since then. But before that, no, I was dumb. Very, very poor with the critical thinking and big picture sight. Because I lose sight of things pretty easily.

Like, I get tunnel vision on certain things. That's probably part of the ADHD or whatever. I don't know, maybe some of the Asperger's, autism, whatever you want to call it.

But honestly, it's just being human, I.

Think, to an extreme level for sure.

For some. Yeah. There's Just these tiny little parts of everybody else's brains that engage in a particular level. And some of us have a.

We have to deal with more of it and then some less. But then there's other things that then filter into place for things that other people can't do as well.

And we're all a hodgepodge of a mess in the soup.

You said it.

So I think, though, the way that we react as we get older and how we can hone in on where we see, oh, maybe like you were just saying, that critical thought and that, that process of being able to recognize those certain aspects of yourself where like, oh, it's not just any particular thing, it's the way I'm seeing it completely. And maybe I can change my perspective on that right now.

And the more you get engaged with yourself and on those areas of complications within yourself, the less it becomes complicated and the less it becomes an issue that you have to work on because you're already doing the work.

Right.

You know, and as long as you're. As long as you are, I guess, open to your ego taking some hits.

Oh, yeah, I'm very open to that. Like, I don't see that to be egotistical or arrogant. I say that because I, I go out of my way to make myself uncomfortable.

Okay.

So that I can become more comfortable in that discomfort and learn how to function in that a bit better. That's very hard.

Well, you know what, let's pause.

We're gonna take a break and it looks like we're gonna actually go into a two parter here with Brian Khols, who is an LCC student who has an aerial view of life. So we'll come back, we'll talk some more about different perspectives and views and taking the ego hits as well as some Krav Maga hits.

Sure.

We'll get some more introspective with Brian Khols. This is Teeden and Ripper. We'll see you on our next part. Thank you.

Thanks for tuning in to RIPPER. You can find more about this and other LCC Connect podcasts at LCCconnect.com.